


Blood Moon

by QuietLittleVoices



Series: The Other Side [2]
Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The X Files, Episode: s05e12 Bad Blood, F/F, Gen, Humour, M/M, X Files Canon Typical Surgical Procedures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 02:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15305538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietLittleVoices/pseuds/QuietLittleVoices
Summary: “Dude, you’re scaring me. What are you gonna tell her?”Sammy raises his eyebrows. “You wanna get our stories straight?”“No!” Ben says, shaking his head quickly. “No, no. I just - I just want to know. You said it - you’re in this with me!”[Or: Bad Blood but it's the werewolves]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There's three chapters to this but it isn't very long, that's just the logical division of it. Sit tight, I'm uploading them all at once because I'm... lazy.
> 
> Also this is way different in tone than the other fics in the series because... it's comedy. It's the Comedic Interlude and the rest are gonna be super emotional and I'm sorry in advance (except that I'm not).

“Don’t start with me,” Ben warns as he storms into the office. “I know what I saw.”

Sammy leans back in his desk chair. “Spears wants our report in an hour,” he reminds Ben. “What are you gonna say to her about it?”

“I’m gonna tell her what happened! What are you gonna tell her?” Ben asks, almost accusingly.

Sammy shrugs. “What I saw.”

Ben throws himself into the lone chair a few feet to the side of the desk. “How is that  _ different _ ?” He covers his face with his hands. “If I’m going to prison I need to know if you’ll have my back, okay? I won’t survive in prison Sammy! I work for the government and I’m probably smaller than most of them!”

“Dylan Baxter’s family isn’t going to sue the FBI,” Sammy says, trying for a reassuring tone. “And if they do we’ll be co-defendants! I’m in this with you, and I didn’t even do anything!”

“He was gonna kill you! He was a werewolf!”

Sammy takes a deep breath and leans forwards, putting his elbows on the desk. “Ben,” he says warningly.

Ben’s eyes are wild, and Sammy notices the bags under them for the first time. “Dude, you’re scaring me. What are you gonna tell her?”

Sammy raises his eyebrows. “You wanna get our stories straight?”

“No!” Ben says, shaking his head quickly. “No, no. I just - I just want to know. You said it - you’re in this with me!”

Sammy leans back again. “Okay. Well, yesterday morning I walked into the office and found you already there, with your stuff all over my desk-”

 

Sammy was already exhausted when he walked into the office and found Ben pacing around the room. 

“We got a call from Archie Simmons’ of Archie’s Pomchi Palace this morning!” Ben announced.

“Archie’s Pomchi - who? What?” Sammy asked, going to sit in his chair and finding a pile of folders on it already. He sighed and moved them off, taking the seat heavily. “Since when do we take personal calls?”

Ben ignored him, rolling on. “King Falls Animal Control reported an uptick in wild animal attacks on local wildlife and, most recently, the prized pomchis’ have been getting visitors in the nighttimes.”

“What does that -?”

“Archie said he heard the dogs last night, went to look and saw a wolf…  _ messing _ with his pomchis,” Ben said, with a raised eyebrow and incline of his head.

Sammy sighed. “So why-”

“Then he saw the wolf stand up an walk off into the woods on two legs.”

“Of course. What kind of-”

Ben grabbed something off the cluttered desk and slapped it on the projector, fiddling with it until it whirred to life. An image of matted hair next to a ruler appeared. “Wolf fur was found at the scene. And wolves aren’t native to Colorado!” he added quickly, like it was some kind of ‘gotcha’.

“There have been sightings in-”

“Never seen one in King Falls,” Ben interrupted. 

“It’s probably cultists, or-”

“It’s werewolves,” Ben said triumphantly. 

“Remind me why we care about pomchis and wildlife?” Sammy asked quickly, trying to get a word in edgewise.

Ben sighed, looking incredibly put-upon. “And a dead human, a tourist from New Jersey.”

“You could have lead with that,” Sammy muttered.

“Let’s go! We’re burning daylight!” Ben announced, grabbing a stack of folders with a few papers flying out as he practically bounced out of the room.

Sammy sat in the empty, silent room for a moment. “Who’s the senior agent here?” he wondered aloud.

 

“Do you normally just talk to yourself in the office?” Ben asks, interrupting Sammy’s story.

Sammy glares at him. “Do you want me to keep talking or not?”

Ben opens his palms and rolls one of his hands in a  _ go on _ gesture.

Sammy keeps looking at him steadily for a moment before restarting. “Troy was busy, and Gunderson never wants to deal with us, so we went to the library to talk to Emily since she’s been looking into the reports -”

 

“Hey, guys!” Emily said cheerfully. “You wanted to talk about Archie’s Pomchi Palace?”

Ben stared at her with a dopey smile on his face. “Yeah...”

Sammy rolled his eyes. “Yes, Emily. We heard some animals were bothering him, and I’m still not sure why that relates to us, but we’re happy to do a favour. Was there anything you found out?”

Emily looked a little disappointed. “No,” she admitted. “Just that whatever’s…  _ messing _ with the pomchis probably killed that tourist, too.”

“That’s what I was told,” Sammy said, giving another glance to Ben who was still lost in the clouds. “Could you take us to look at the body?”

Emily smiled at him. “Of course - it’s just at the hospital.” She turned around and started leading the way out of the library.

“Can we look at-”

“We’re already going, Ben,” Sammy interrupted, nudging him with his elbow. “Let’s get going before you start catching flies.”

Ben scowled at him but followed him out of the building.

 

The body was out on a table when they entered and Sammy went to look at the table of possessions near the entrance.

“Has Doctor Rosenblum done an exam yet?” he asked.

“No,” Emily replied. “He’s on vacation right now, and the other doctors wanted to leave it for Ben when they heard he was coming.”

Ben appeared to have gotten slightly more of his bearings back when Sammy glanced at him, but he still looked a little red in the cheeks. “It’s probably good. I believe whoever killed this man, and has been around the Pomchi Palace, happens to suffer from lycanthropy.”

Sammy scoffed. “Watched too many episodes of Teen Wolf, you mean.”

“There have been a few eye witness accounts, from Archie and other people, of the wolves transforming into people,” Emily said agreeably.

“Really?” Sammy groaned.

“It’s a real condition, Sammy,” Ben chastised. “It’s been documented.”

“I’m sure.” Finally, he saw a folded piece of paper in the plastic ziplock. He reached in and carefully unfolded it, finding a grave etching that was nearly unreadable on it. “Emily, could you take me to the cemetery while Ben does the autopsy?”

Emily nodded. “You mean the King Falls Memorial Gardens? Of course.” She left the side of the body and started to walk out of the room, turning back to look at Ben with a slight blush. “Goodbye, Benny.”

 

“It’s Ben,” he interupts.

“Hey!  _ I _ didn’t say that,  _ she _ did!”

Ben crosses his arms. “Sorry, it’s a reflex. What happened at the Memorial Gardens?”

“As I was saying-”

 

“Why did you want to come all the way out here?” Emily asked as they got out of the car.

Sammy pulled out the etching. “Found this in the guys possessions. He must have come by here just before he died to still have it in his pocket.”

“What are we looking for, exactly?”

“I thought we’d start with finding the grave,” he said. “Then head over to the groundskeepers house.”

Before they could set to work searching, they were interrupted by someone calling over to them.

“What are you doing here?” the man asked, walking over to them with a pair of gardening shears in hand.

Sammy pulled his badge out of his pocket. “Just looking around,” he said as the man got closer. “I’m Agent Stevens with the FBI. Who are you?”

“Well, I’m Pete Meyers, best landscaper in town,” he said, puffing his chest out a little in pride. “Are you looking into the werewolves?”

Sammy sighed. “I highly doubt there’s any werewolves, but did you see anything yesterday or last night?”

“I saw the dead guy,” he said bluntly. “Well, he wasn’t dead when I saw him. Just looking around - who goes to a Memorial Gardens on vacation? Probably a creep. Anyway. Some of the guys who work here - like, the gravediggers? They saw him too and they were spending way too much time around the South end of the Gardens, where he was. I was supposed to be trimming the hedges back there, but they kept getting in my way, and they didn’t even have a funeral today!”

“Do you think any of them might have killed the tourist?” Sammy asked seriously.

Pete scoffed. “Think so? Uh-yeah. They’re creepy as hell.”

Suddenly, Sammy’s phone rings and he picks it up. “Hello?”

“Hey there, Sammy,” Troy said over the line. “I’ve got a situation at the truck stop right now. Heard you were in town; thought you  might want to check it out.”

“What kind of-”

“Back away from there!” Troy yelled suddenly, and Sammy had to move the phone from his ear. “Sorry about that. Just get on down here, faster the better.” He hung up.

Sammy turned to Emily. “Looks like we have something else to check out.”

 

The cab of a truck was going off on its own, driving itself in a circle around the truck stop. Luckily there were no other trucks in the way, and Troy was managing to keep the crowd in check.

“Looks like you’ve got a runaway,” Sammy commented, walking over to Troy.

“Sure seems like it,” he said, looking haggard. “What do you think? We shoot the tires out?”

 

“After that’s when I went back to the motel,” Sammy says.

“Wait, wait - you shot the tires out on a runaway truck?” Ben asks in disbelief.

Sammy sighs. “Just the cab. Moving on -”

“No, what happened? You shot the tires, then what?”

“Well, turns out it’s pretty hard to shoot the tires of a moving vehicle. So I decided to start a different approach-”

 

Sammy clung desperately to the back of the cab as it dragged him behind it at its relatively slow pace. He yelled for help and then let go, rolling into a mud puddle. Troy helped him up.

The runaway cab started to sputter and slow down as they watched and Sammy walked over to open the door.

An unconscious man was slumped forward in the passenger seat. Sammy nudged his shoulder and he bolted awake.

“Oh, God!” he cried, looking around frantically. “What the heck happened?”

“Who… are you?” Sammy asked cautiously.

“Name’s Finn,” he said, visibly starting to calm down.

“Okay, Finn. Can you tell me how your truck ended up… doing this?”

Finn looked out the door and saw the circle worn into the dirt. “Uh, well - honestly, last thing I remember is a dog runnin’ out in front of my truck. Slammed on the breaks and - I don’t know. Think I got out and checked on it, but I’m real allergic to dogs. Maybe I took some allergy pills and fell asleep?”

Sammy sighed. “I think we’re done here.”

 

Ben laughs, covering his mouth with his hand quickly. “So you-”

“I will leave you to rot in prison,” Sammy warns. “I’ll send the biggest, meanest dude after you if you say anything about my methods.”

“Your methods, of course. Go on.”

“That’s when I went back to the motel room and found you… characteristically exuberant-”

 

Sammy unlocked the motel room door, limbs heavy and sore as he felt the drying mud in his hair. 

“Look what I found!” Ben announced, bounding over to the door and shoving something in Sammy’s face.

Sammy sighed and pushed Ben’s arm down to get a real look at what appeared to be a claw. “Okay?”

“This was stuck in the wound on the tourists’ shoulder!”

“That’s great, Ben,” Sammy muttered. “Can you go talk to Pete Meyers? He said he saw some of the cemetery workers acting weird with the tourist, but I don’t know him well enough to get anything from him. I’m gonna call the groundskeeper directly.”

Ben visibly deflated. “You want me to talk to Pete Meyers?” he whined. “Why now? I just spent  _ hours _ on my feet in an autopsy while you were out actually looking for the werewolves! And you don’t even believe in them! I haven’t even  _ eaten _ since six this morning and that was half a cream cheese bagel at the airport. It wasn’t even  _ real _ cream cheese - it was lite cream cheese! And you want me to talk to Pete fucking Meyers?” Ben got up and snatched his coat off the dresser, noticing the mud all over Sammy for the first time. “What happened to you?” he asked.

Ben left without waiting for an answer and Sammy fell onto the bed, pulling his phone out.

“You’ve reached King Falls Memorial Gardens. Freddie Osborne speaking. How can I help you?” the person on the other end asked. His voice set Sammy on edge.

“Hi, I’m Agent Stevens with the FBI?” Sammy said, closing his eyes. “Are you the head groundskeeper?”

“I am. What brings the FBI calling our little Garden?”

“I just have a few questions for you, or more accurately one of your workers. I was told some of them might have seen the tourist who was found dead?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Sammy heard muffled speaking, as if Freddie had covered the phone with his hand. “That seems to be the case,” he said. “I can send one of them on by to talk to you, if you’d like.”

“That would be helpful, thank you. I’m at the King Falls Inn & Suites, room seventeen. When can I expect them?”

Freddie made a thoughtful noise. “About twenty-five minutes? That isn’t too far.”

“Thank you so much.”

“Take care of yourself, Agent Stevens.”

Freddie hung up and Sammy heaved himself out of bed to shower.

 

Someone knocked on the door just as Sammy was stepping out of the bathroom in his suit pants and an undershirt. “Coming!” he said, rubbing his shoulder-length hair with a towel aggressively before tossing it to the side. He grabbed his button up off the chair and put it on hastily, forgoing the blazer and opening the door.

A young man he didn’t recognize stood on the other side. “You must be Agent Stevens,” he said with a grin. His voice had a similar grating quality to Freddie’s and Sammy repressed a shiver.

“Yes. And you are…?”

The man lunged to attack him and Sammy saw the rental car pull in front of the room and Ben jumped out, drawing his gun. Sammy dropped down and heard a gunshot go off. It looked like it missed the young man, and he took a moment to be glad he was on the floor. The man took off running and Ben followed. Sammy heaved himself off the floor and went after the two of them, only catching up in time to see Ben knock the man to the ground.


	2. Chapter 2

“And that’s when you… overreacted,” Sammy concludes.

“He was a werewolf!” Ben protests. “And he was gonna kill you!”

“I think I was holding my own pretty well.”

Ben raises an eyebrow. “And really? I didn’t hit him? Because I saw it different.”

Sammy waves his hand dramatically. “The floor is yours.”

Ben bowes his head forward. “Well, you were late, as usual-”

 

Ben waited patiently behind the desk chair in the office, a stack of files neatly placed in the center. He checks his watch and walks around the desk just as the door opens and Sammy comes in, shoulders slumped.

“We got a call from Archie Simmons’ - he runs Archie’s Pomchi Palace?” Ben said evenly.

“Pomchi?” Sammy muttered, mostly to himself as he walked behind the desk and pushed files off the chair indelicately. “Since when do we take calls?”

“It’s a pomeranian-chihuahua mix. King Falls Animal control noted more animal attacks than normal in the last few days and Archie is pretty concerned. His pomchis in particular have been visited by wild animals at night.”

Sammy raised an eyebrow at him. “And?”

“Well, Archie said that last night his guard dog, Rufus, started barking at something in the yard. When he would out to look he saw a, well, a wolf-like creature…” Ben cleared his throat. “ _ Messing _ with his pomchi.”

Sammy sighed.

“When it heard Rufus barking, the creature… got up and walked away, on two legs.” Sammy gave him a look as he went to get a slide for the projector, setting it up expertly. “They found wolf fur in his yard, and wolves aren’t native to Colorado. There haven’t been any sightings in the last year, and only a handful over the last ten. And never in King Falls,” Ben explained.

“It’s probably just weirdos or cultists,” Sammy muttered.

“I believe,” Ben said diplomatically, “that we may be dealing with a person or persons who suffer from lycanthropy.”

“Great. Why do we care?”

“Last night they found a tourist dead on the side of the road,” Ben said.

Sammy rolled his eyes. “Could’a started with that.”

“Spears gave us a flight for six, so we should head over now,” Ben said, handing Sammy a boarding pass and walking out of the room.

 

“Hey, guys!” Emily greeted them when they walked into the library. “You wanted to talk about Archie’s poor pomchis?”

Ben straightened his lapels. “Yes, actually -”

“Yeah, we heard they were being  _ messed _ with by some wildlife,” Sammy interrupted. “I think it’s all ridiculous, but  _ Benny _ here insisted. Did you find anything out?”

“No, but whatever Archie saw with the pomchis is probably what killed that tourist,” Emily said.

“Can we look at the body?” Ben asked quickly, and Emily smiled at him.

“Of course - it’s just in the hospital.” She turned to lead the way out of the library, and Sammy dug his elbow into Ben’s ribs.

“Let’s get going before you start catching flies.”

 

“I don’t sound like that,” Sammy interrupts. “And I don’t call you  _ Benny _ … much. Unless I’m teasing you, but you deserve it. And I didn’t yesterday!”

“Who’s story is this?” Ben replies.

“Just stop doing the… voice. I’m not sure who that’s supposed to be, but it’s not me.”

Ben raises his eyebrows. “How would you know? Because you talk to yourself?”

Sammy sighs. “Just - stop it with the voice and keep talking. What happened during the autopsy?”

“No, if you get to say all of it then so do I. Emily took us to the hospital -”

 

The body was already out when they arrived. Sammy took one look at it and turned around as fast as possible, nearly knocking over a tray of surgical equipment that Ben is barely able to catch.

“Has an exam been done?” Ben asked.

“No,” Emily replied. “Doctor Rosenblum’s been on vacation, and the other doctors wanted to leave it for the professionals.”

“Why don’t you tell Emily your ‘theory’?” Sammy asked, putting air quotes around the word without turning back towards them.

“I happen to believe,” Ben said slowly, “that whoever has been around the Pomchi Palace, and whoever killed this man, happened to be suffering from a severe case of lycanthropy.”

Sammy scoffed. “Sounds like Teen Wolf got to him.”

Emily ignored Sammy. “There have been eye witness accounts from around the Palace of these wolves transforming,” she said agreeably.

Sammy groaned.

“It’s a real condition. It’s been documented in many scientific journals and-”

“Hey, Emily, can you take me to the cemetery while Ben does this autopsy?” Sammy interrupted, reaching into one of the ziplock bags and pulling out a fragile looking piece of paper without a thought, crumpling it slightly in his grip.

“King Falls Memorial Gardens?” Emily asked. “Sure.” She started to leave to room and stopped at the door. “Goodbye, Benny.”

Sammy followed her through the door, leaving Ben alone in the morgue.

He sighed and got ready to perform the autopsy and set the recorder going. “Starting autopsy on John Doe. White male, age sixty. I’ll start with the y-incision.” He started cutting into the body. “Why am I stuck here doing this?” he muttered as he worked. “Sammy’s out there all gallivanting around, doing field work, and I have to check on the insides of this dead guy who was  _ obviously _ killed by a werewolf!” He set down his tools and went to the wound in the man’s shoulder, three deep gashes which he described aloud. “I’m going to examine these more closely, actually.” He got his face closer to it, and picked up a scalpel to carefully pull the skin apart. “Oh. What’s this?”

 

“I finished up the autopsy properly after that,” Ben says. “But I kept the claw in a bag.”

“Do you still have it?” Sammy asks. “Maybe it’ll sway Spears.”

Ben gives him a look. “You don’t even sound like you’re trying. After the autopsy was complete, I went back to the motel to take a nap and maybe grab some food. That’s when you showed up-”

 

“I found something,” Ben said when Sammy walked in, covered in mud. He reached over to the bedside table and picked up the evidence bag. “This was in the tourists wound.”

“Great,” Sammy muttered. “Can you talk to Pete Meyes? I’m gonna call the cemetery guys.”

Ben sighed but stood up. “Of course I will, because I’m a professional and that is my job.” He left the room and got in the car.

 

“That’s not what you said,” Sammy accuses.

“Well I didn’t  _ whine _ like a child, Sammy, so. Who’s story is this?”

Sammy puts his hands up defensively. “Keep going, then. How’d your conversation with Pete go?”

 

Ben found Pete still at the Memorial Gardens, working on the West hedges. 

“Hey, Arnold,” Pete greeted.

“That’s Agent Arnold to you,” Ben replied. “You spoke to my partner earlier?” 

Pete put down his sheers. “Oh, yeah. Tall guy, man bun? Yeah he and Emily were here earlier.” He put a finger to his face in a mock-thinking position. “Do you think Emily-”

“Shut up, Pete,” Ben groaned. “Did you see the dead tourist last night?”

“I already told Stevens this. Freddie and his  _ pack _ were following him around yesterday.”

Ben froze. “The groundskeepers? They had their eyes on him?”

“Of course they did. It’s almost a full moon,” Pete said, as if it was completely obvious.

Ben sprinted back to the car.

 

“That’s when I came and heroically saved you,” Ben says.

“I was holding my own,” Sammy insists again. “And anyway, this is the important part. What happened at the motel?”

“I pulled up and saw the door wide open-”

 

Ben got out of the car and drew his gun when he saw the young man grab Sammy tightly by the shoulder. He made eye contact with Sammy, raising his gun, and Sammy dropped to the floor. The shot hit directly in the man’s back but did nothing and the man turned towards Ben and ran towards the woods.

Ben followed him and fired off another shot, which hit and made the man stumble giving Ben enough time to tackle him to the ground. He took a large silver nail from inside his blazer and drove it into the man’s chest just as Sammy ran up.

 

“Do you just keep that on you always?” Sammy asks idly.

Ben rolls his eyes. “Of course not. I picked it up because I knew there were werewolves.”

“Of course.”

 

“Just remind her that it was self-defense,” Sammy says as they wait for Spears to exit her office.

“But you were the one-”

“Doesn’t matter. Just say it.”

Spears opened the door and Ben jumped up. “It was self-defense!”

She sighs and closes her eyes for a second. “You’re going back to King Falls,” she says. “Archie Simmons just called and said one of his pomchis had a human baby.”

 

Archie’s Pomchi Palace has a brightly-coloured sign out front, indicating it clearly to any passers-by hoping for a designer dog mix. Sammy knocks on the door and an older man in a bathrobe answers the door. “Are you the federal agents?” he asks.

“Yes, I’m Agent Stevens and this is Agent Arnold,” Sammy replies.

“Is that little Ben Arnold? I called you about the werewolves, didn’t I? Finally showing up,” Archie says, shaking his head in disappointment.

“We were here yesterday,” Ben replies shortly.

“Well, then I’m sure you heard about the miracle baby!”

“We did,” Sammy confirms. “Could you show us the baby?”

Archie sighs dramatically, leaning against the doorframe. “I wish I could, boys, but it got taken away by the werewolves! I think it was one of the Baxter boys, or that trucker - the new one, Finn. You need to get it back!”

“So that the child can go to a good and safe home, yes,” Sammy says.

“So I can make tons of money off the werewolf baby!”

“Okay. Well - we’ll see about that as a Plan B, okay?” Ben replies. “Is that all, Archie?”

“I guess so.”

 

Sammy and Ben pull up to find the truck stop with a crowd of about twenty people waiting for them. Finn, the truck driver, was holding a baby.

“I apologize for all of this,” a man says, and his voice identifies him to Sammy as Freddie Osborne. “Dylan Baxter makes us all look bad.” He indicates the baby. “That should never have happened.”

“Well, if you could just turn the baby to us to give to social services, we can forget everything that happened here,” Sammy replies. “No harm, no foul.”

The corner of Freddie’s mouth turned up. “See, I can’t let you do that. I’m really sorry, fellas.”

The crowd started to close in.

 

Sammy startles awake, hitting his head on the top of the car. He awkwardly pulls his feet in through the window and nudges Ben.

“What the hell happened?” he asks.

Ben rubs his eyes. “I don’t -” he looks around. The car is still in the truck stop, but the trucks are gone. “Do you think-?”

“I don’t know.”

 

“And that’s what happened,” Ben concludes, sitting in front of Director Spears.

Sammy nods slowly. “That is, essentially, exactly how it happened,” he agrees.

She sighs and leans forwards, putting her elbows on her desk and pressing her index fingers into the bridge of her nose. “I don’t even know where to begin. You should feel lucky that Dylan Baxter’s family isn’t pressing charges.”

“We know,” Sammy acknowledges. “Sorry for your time, Reagan.”

Silently, Sammy and Ben stand up and leave the office. “Reagan?” Ben asks.

Sammy shrugs. “We’re friends. Focus on the important part - we aren’t going to prison.”

“Oh, yeah.” Ben does a little victory dance in the hallway, causing several people to turn and look, and Sammy can’t help but laugh. “We’re free men!”


	3. Epilogue

Sammy walked into his empty and dark apartment, throwing his keys towards the bowl near the door and missing. He didn’t bother to pick them up, dropping his coat and blazer on the back of the couch as he sat down with the lights still off. He pulled the paper Troy had given him nearly two months prior out of his pocket, staring at the numbers that were starting to fade.

He closed his eyes tightly and let out a deep breath. “Okay. You gotta do this,” he murmured to himself. He typed the number in quickly and put it on speaker phone.

It rang for a long time, longer than before.

“Hello?” the same voice from before asked.

“Hi, I’m Agent Stevens, I called you before and hung up and I’m sorry but can I talk to you now?” he says quickly, all in one breath as if the man will hang up at any second.

“You said before that Deputy Kriegshauser gave you this number, correct?”

“He did. He said your name was Walt, correct?”

The man is silent for a moment. “Correct. What do you want to know, Agent Stevens?”

Sammy sucked in a breath. “I want to know about Perdition Woods.”

“There are a lot of things in those woods, young man. You’ll have to be more specific.”

Sammy grabbed the notebook - Jack’s notebook - off the table and opened it with shaking hands. “I - someone I know disappeared. He was looking into the things that happen there, the disappearances and - and something called the Devil’s Doorstep.”

Walt was silent for a long time, long enough that Sammy started to worry. He could still hear the background noise of the phone line being on, and he clung to that. “You don’t know what you’re meddling in.”

“No, I don’t. But I need to. Troy said you could help me.”

“I’m not going to help you get yourself killed. I’m sorry you lost someone, but those that go to the Void do not come back. They are lost to the Shadows.”

The line clicked dead and Sammy felt his breathing hitch in his chest and pressed his eyes closed. He almost screamed in frustration but took care to set his phone down carefully on top of the notebook.

Walt hadn’t meant to tell him anything, but he did give Sammy more information than he’d had before. The last page of Jack’s notebook had one word on it.  _ Shadowmaker _ . It had to be connected.

It had to be. Sammy had to believe it was. Which meant he was one step closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... for real the third fic in this series won't post for a bit because of work and other stuff. I genuinely don't know how I wrote this all today.
> 
> Please leave a comment to help me work through the rest of this series! I hope you enjoyed it!!


End file.
